Fierce - Brody

by Natalie Ann

  Even if Aimee had yet to have an innocent thought about Brody.

  “I’m hungry,” Sidney said as Aimee started to pour pancake batter in a pan.

  “Not much longer, honey.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sidney walking around opening cabinets and drawers. She probably should stop her but figured if Sidney entertained herself with some pots or pans, maybe even containers, it would distract her from the fact breakfast wasn’t done when Sidney wanted it.

  By the time Brody came down, there were containers on the floor that Sidney was piling and knocking down, along with an open drawer and some papers.

  “Oops, sorry about that,” Aimee said, reaching down for the papers. “I didn’t see her get into that drawer. I’ll clean it up right away.”

  “Brody,” Sidney said, holding up a photo.

  It was the first time Sidney had said his name and they both turned and looked at her. Aimee got to the photo first and took it out of her hand and looked at it. There was Brody and another man she’d never seen before.

  “Who’s that?” Aimee asked, turning the photo toward him. He took it out of her hand, looked at it quickly, then shoved it back in the open drawer without saying a word. “Brody?” she asked, unsure what to make of his mood. “Are you okay? I’m sorry Sidney made a mess.”

  “It’s not that,” he said.

  “Then what is it?”

  “Nothing. Let’s eat. I’m hungry. Breakfast looks great.”

  She busied herself filling Sidney’s plate and cutting up the pancake while Brody buckled her in the booster seat they picked up yesterday.

  “You didn’t tell me who was in that picture with you. Is that an old employee or a friend?”

  He looked at her again and finally said, “Neither.”

  “You look like you’re both happy so I’m finding it hard to believe it’s a stranger or even an enemy,” she said, laughing.

  “He was a friend,” Brody said, then looked back at the food.

  “Was?” she asked, hoping that the young man wasn’t deceased.

  “Yeah. That’s Craig. I know you’ve heard his name.”

  “Where is he now?” she asked cautiously.

  “Who knows?” Brody said, then sat down and started to eat.

  ***

  There was a noticeable drop in temperature in the kitchen after that. The three of them eating their breakfast and not saying a word. The silence was like a volcano getting ready to erupt.

  When Aimee was done with her breakfast, she stood up and started to wash the dishes. After Sidney finished, Aimee cleaned her up and let her go play with some more containers out of the way.

  Brody just continued to sit there, staring at her back. That lava was bubbling at the surface, getting ready to spill over.

  Before he could say anything, she turned around and leaned on the counter, taking a deep breath. “You know, I’ve told you a lot of pretty embarrassing things about my life. Things that hardly anyone knows. Personal things that I would have preferred to keep secret.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you? I thought we were going to be honest with each other. In my eyes, part of being honest is not having secrets.”

  “It is.”

  “Yet you’ve got one. I just can’t figure out what it is or why. I’ve heard all these pieces of things since I’ve been here. A fight between you and Cade that sent you both to cool your heels. Your friend Craig, that no one will say a word about, and you clam up whenever he’s mentioned. How the last year changed you. What is going on?”

  “You’re right. You’ve told me things and I haven’t shared as much in return.”

  “We’ve got a few hours before I need to go home and get ready for work. So start talking.”

  He wanted to tell her to mind her own damn business, but he couldn’t. She was starting to mean a great deal to him and if he couldn’t talk to her about something that changed his life, or made him look at life differently, then everything he wanted from her—for them—would be meaningless.

  “I met Craig at the bar two years ago. Nice guy. About my age. We had nothing in common.”

  “How’s that?”

  “He was a pharmacist. Smart, cocky, had women eating out of the palm of his hand.”

  “The only difference I see between the two of you is your career, but go on.”

  He laughed. It was the way she said it, sarcasm mixed in with annoyance. “Probably right again. We hit it off, you could say. He’d come in a few times a week after work. We’d get talking about our lives.”

  “A bar friend,” she said.

  She got it. Regulars would come in and act like your friend. Tell you about their lives, brag about things, confess things, most likely exaggerate because you were only a temporary friend. Surface friendship, really. Someone they could talk to almost anonymously.

  “It started out that way. You know how it is. You keep things about yourself private, but they talk about themselves. Lend an ear, so to speak.”

  “Exactly. So he turned out to be more than a bar friend based on that picture,” she said.

  He thought of the good times the two of them had, then pushed it aside. He didn’t want those memories now. Not when he knew they were worthless.

  “Yeah. We caught a couple of basketball games together. Then football. Went to some concerts. Next thing I knew, he’s at family parties and coming to my house and hanging out. Staying from time to time. We got close and it was nice to have a friend that wasn’t associated with my siblings.”

  “You’ve never had that before?” she asked, sounding surprised. Most people didn’t get that, not if you weren’t part of multiples like him.

  “Not really. All of our friends always knew each other when we were growing up. At least for me. Everyone else went away to college so they picked up other friends there, but I never really had anyone else. Anyone…separate.”

  “What did you do when your brothers were away in college? Who did you hang out with?”

  “Friends here. Friends we had as a group, or at least who knew everyone. I never had anyone new in my circle.” It shouldn’t bother him this late in life, but it still did.

  “I guess that makes sense. I never thought of it one way or another, though,” she said. “I never knew any twins growing up, let alone quintuplets.”

  “Not many people do. It’s great having each other, but there is a lack of identity that comes with it, too.” He waved his hand. “That’s another conversation at a different time. I’m sure more twins or multiples would say the same at some point or another.”

  “You had a friend that didn’t associate with your siblings. I get that now. Was that a problem for everyone else?”

  “Not really. Craig got along with everyone well. Cade was really the only one who didn’t care for Craig that much, but I took it as jealousy.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  If he really analyzed things right now, he’d realize that she was talking to him as if she was working and he was a customer. Listening to what he was saying, asking questions, but not giving much more than that.

  “Because Cade and I shared a room growing up. Though we fought the most, we were also the closest. I just figured he was annoyed that he might be being replaced.”

  “But that wasn’t the case?”

  “It seems not. It’s more like Cade saw what no one else did and a few months ago, during one of our disagreements, he threw it in my face. The result was my fist in his face. You know the rest after that.”

  “Wow. I’m not sure what to say.” She was looking at him intensely now. It was curiosity, but more like information gathering. The kind where he knew he better watch how he answered. “Do you hit your brothers often?”

  “No. Not since we were teens, but even then I’d never struck one in the face. We’d push and wrestle, but a fist to the face is personal. We never got personal like that before.”

  She nodded and he took that as a good sign. �
��So what happened with Craig then? What did Cade see that no one else did?”

  “Cade didn’t see anything other than he never completely trusted Craig or liked him, for that matter. He felt Craig was hiding something…and he was right.”

  Aimee walked over and sat at the island next to him. When she asked, “You’ve got me filled with suspense. What was he hiding?” he almost felt like he was telling a story and somehow it made it easier to spill it.

  Without hesitation, he started to talk. “The more Craig and I hung out, the more he came to the bar regularly. Even at odd times, but it was still regular.”

  “Odd how?”

  “It wasn’t just his days or nights off. It would be in the middle of the day, too. Most regulars have a shift they come. Not all hours of the day if they have a job. Even if they didn’t have a job, unless they were an alcoholic—which he wasn’t—they weren’t in the bar that much.”

  “True. Maybe he was lonely.”

  “I’d buy that, but Craig was always talking to people. Different types of people, too. Shady people at times. Someone you wouldn’t picture him associating with. I should have seen it then, but didn’t think much of it. I figured he ran into all sorts of people at his job, so maybe it was someone he’d met once. I tried not to judge.” Which bit him in the ass.

  “Did he have a gambling problem maybe? A drug problem?”

  She was smarter than he gave her credit for. “He didn’t gamble or do drugs. But once he was arrested, we realized he sold drugs.”

  “Oh,” she said, her jaw dropping. “He wasn’t selling them out of Fierce, was he?”

  “Not selling them, but making contacts there. Drop times. Almost like it was his office for his side business.”

  She blinked a few times. Her jaw opened and then closed before she finally asked, “What was he selling?”

  “Narcotics that he was stealing from work when he could. Or things he was manufacturing on his own time. Stuff of that sort. I’d only been to his place a few times and never in the basement, but I learned that was where he was experimenting.”

  “How did he get caught?” she asked. “You said he was arrested.”

  “He was really just a middle man. He got caught up with the wrong crowd in college. His father was a gambler and got in debt with the wrong people. To bail his dad out, he went to work doing things he shouldn’t have done. Once they got their claws in him, there was no way out.”

  “So he was saving his family?” she asked.

  He was surprised she would look at it that way. That she would look for the good out of it. Not someone who constantly talked about all the mistakes she’d made in her life.

  “I guess. To a point. We learned later that once the debt was covered he had an opportunity to walk away, but chose not to. It was risky and adventurous and he liked the thrill of what he was doing under people’s nose. That no one expected it from him, and the more he got away with, the more exciting it was.”

  “That’s completely stupid.”

  “He didn’t think so. Anyway, to make matters worse, he was selling to kids. Teenagers. Easy targets, and it makes me ill just talking about it. A girl overdosed and died. If her father hadn’t been the chief of police and her mother the district attorney, then maybe Craig wouldn’t have been caught. But they wouldn’t let it go. He was under surveillance for a long time while they built a case against him.”

  “You had no idea any of this was going on? Not even after the girl died? I remember hearing about that on the news. It was a big story, even a state away.”

  “No clue. I had no reason to suspect anything. It was talked about in the bar and Craig reacted to it like everyone else did. Shock and sympathy, but nothing else. To this day, I still look back and try to see what I missed. How could I get close to someone like that?”

  “So you had a lapse in judgment. You got played. By someone who mastered it, it seems. Don’t we all?”

  “It’s more than that. My lapse in judgment almost cost my family their business. We were all under surveillance for months and no one knew. Not one of us had any idea.”

  “Ohhh,” she said, pausing. “But I don’t remember hearing anything about Fierce in the news. I would have remembered that.”

  “Luckily all that surveillance and investigation only showed what idiots we were. We had no idea, and because he never exchanged drugs or money here, it was nothing more than talking with people over a beer or food. We were kept out of it, other than him worming his way in so he’d be accepted here as a regular. So no one would think anything of him being here all the time because he was my friend.”

  She winced when he said that. “That’s good that Fierce was kept out of it. So is Craig in jail now?”

  “It’s good that it wasn’t publicly acknowledged. But employees knew Craig and I were close. Many were looking at me for a long time, wondering if I had a part in it. Wondering what I might be hiding and if my family and money managed to buy my freedom.”

  “Then they didn’t know the real you. Or your family.”

  “I couldn’t blame them. Maybe I would have thought the same thing, too. Who knows? Felix ended up quitting because he said he couldn’t trust me. He didn’t want to believe it, but he couldn’t get past it. At that point I was glad to see him go, but it hit me hard. I was the leader. I was looked up to and now my own staff couldn’t trust me or my judgment. My own family was questioning everything I did and who I talked to. They still are, even if they deny it.”

  “That has to be hard.”

  “It is. It’s gotten a lot better, but I still feel the heat of it. Time dims people’s memories, which is good. It didn’t dim mine, though. Once you’ve got self-doubt it’s hard to get past it.”

  She snorted. “Preaching to the choir. So you didn’t tell me where Craig was then.”

  “I really don’t know. And don’t care. He struck a plea deal. Once it was discovered this was a bigger operation than first suspected, the Feds got involved and wanted to know who was leading the whole organization. In exchange for names, Craig went into witness protection. He wasn’t loyal to anyone. He was only out for himself.”

  “That’s why the whole story seemed to drop about him? How it turned into a huge takedown a few months later?”

  “Yeah. They put him into protection while they built more of his case up. Then when everything died down around him and the girl’s death, the Feds made their move.”

  “How do you know all of this?” she asked.

  “Because he sought me out the day before he was getting his new life,” he said, disgusted.

  He had to get up and pace. Long gone was the façade of storytelling, and now he was feeling it all over again. Feeling like he did when Craig walked in before the bar was officially open for the day. How he acted like nothing had happened in the last few months. That Brody and his family hadn’t almost lost everything they worked their whole lives for.

  That if Aiden hadn’t come in when he had, that Brody would have done more than put a fist in Craig’s face.

  “I hope it was to apologize to you and your family,” she said.

  “No. Not really. Just to say he did his best to keep my family and my name out of everything. He hadn’t done anything wrong in Fierce and he’d make sure they continued to know that. Then he said bye and that was it.”

  “That was low.”

  “Yeah. He kept his word since we didn’t have any ill effects at the business, but he at least owed my parents an apology. They took him in like one of their own. They treated him like family. My mother cried over this. Everything they worked so hard for was almost lost. And it was almost lost because of me.”

  Seeing his mother cry over it wasn’t even a fraction of the anger he’d felt that day Craig came in. Protection was second nature to him, and no one messed with his mother.

  “Not because of you, Brody. Not even because you befriended the wrong person. It was all on Craig. He did it. You have nothing to blame yourself f
or.”

  In his mind he did, though. Because of his actions, he wasn’t the man he used to be.

  Game Face

  Aimee left Brody’s house shortly after their talk. She drove home with Sidney, changed into her uniform, and brought Sidney to Melanie’s house.

  “How well do you know Jolene Fierce?” she asked.

  “I worked for Jolene and Gavin for almost fifteen years,” Melanie said. “Best employers I ever had. I still get together with Jolene now and again for lunch. They always treat their employees like family.”

  “I see that.” She hesitated a minute, then just blurted out, “Do you think I only got hired because you’re friends with her?”

  “Of course not, Aimee. Jolene may be sweet, but she is one tough cookie. Not much gets by her. She wouldn’t put Jesus in a management position unless she checked every reference he had and was still positive he could do the job. If she has anything to do with it, most don’t get an interview unless she’s all but talked to their mamas about their bad habits,” Melanie said, smiling.

  Aimee laughed. Melanie was always a straightforward one. “That makes me feel a little better. I mean, not that she could have checked into me that much,” Aimee said, frowning, thinking about it some more. “Could she have? No, never mind. I don’t want to know. So you knew all the kids then when they were younger?”

  What she really wanted was some insight on Brody, or at least his family as a whole back then. She sure as heck couldn’t ask point blank, not without Melanie wanting to know why.

  “I sure did. I haven’t worked there in ten years but saw them all graduate and head off to school. All but Brody. Those kids were barely starting school when I first met them. What a wild bunch they were. All turned out pretty darn good though. I’m sure it makes their parents proud.”

  “I can see it does,” Aimee said, then left quickly. She didn’t get as much as she hoped for and didn’t want to pry too much. Melanie was good at digging for information, so there was no reason to put up flags.